Good Reads and Goodbyes

I left GoodReads recently. And I also deleted my 15 year old IMDb account. One reason was that these ratings are monetized, but another is that stars don’t tell the whole story. It was a personal decision, not a matter of principle. I am a reader and a writer, but not so much a reviewer. I found both sites useful, but not enough to share my stars with them. As you may have read, authors sometimes behave badly on Goodreads. I am reasonably sure I wouldn’t, but now that’s a certainty.

So here are a few books and films I’ve enjoyed recently, and why. It’s the month of Halloween, so some of these are creepy.

I just started WEIRDO by Cathi Unsworth, and I’m enjoying it very much. Some of that is ’80s nostalgia and old punk camaraderie, but she has a fine voice, a sneaky and subtle one that stands back and lets the story tell itself. The story is about a young woman who was institutionalized for the ritual murder of a fellow schoolmate, and a PI and activist who want to shed light on her trial, because she may not have acted alone. It has echoes of the “Paradise Lost” murders of Robin Hood Hills, the Satanic Panic of the early ’80s, and how anyone who was a “weirdo” felt back then, when having rocks thrown at you was commonplace.

PHANTASM, the infamous 1979 horror film by Don Coscarelli, who went on to direct Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies at the End, was a blast. Yes, it’s cheap and cheesy and low-budget, but they managed great creepiness and well-spent gore with what they had. The Tall Man certainly is memorable, and what he’s doing with those corpses… well, it reminds me of another book I just finished, which was excellent:

THE CRONING by Laird Barron is a modern Lovecraftian masterpiece, without the sickly xenophobia beneath the surface, and a paranoid touch of Pynchon as well. The story is a slow burn but is well worth the wait, I kept expecting it to become twee and quaint like James Blaylock’s The Last Coin (a personal favorite) but the adorable ineptitude of its protagonist has an all too chilling reason, and I wouldn’t rob you of that revelation. Simply one of the best books I’ve read this year and one of my favorite horror novels in a long time.

And not as creepy, I enjoyed COME HERE OFTEN? 53 Writers Raise a Glass to Their Favorite Bar. Edited by Sean Manning, it includes entries by Laura Lippmann, Frank Bill, Alissa Nutting, Andrew WK, Duffy McKagan, Malachy McCourt, Tom Franklin, and a host of journalists, writers, musicians, and more, giving us a tour of bars from McMurdo Station to the ’70s Lower East Side, sneak-drinking in Tehran, literary bars from Oxford Mississippi to remote islands in the Pacific, James Crumley’s favorite watering holes, and more. A handsome little volume full of interesting reading.

But if you want some good scary reading, you can do worse than Flavorwire’s 50 scariest stories. I’m reading my way through the list. In daytime. With the lights on….

I’m not sure that authors should be replying to reviewers on that site or anywhere else. I personally have been attacked over on Amazon far more than anything that ever happened at Goodreads.

Comments are closed.

Thomas Pluck has slung hash, trained in martial arts in America and Japan, worked on the docks, and even swept the Guggenheim museum (but not as part of a clever heist). He hails from Nutley, New Jersey, the birthplace of criminal masterminds Martha Stewart and Richard Blake, but has so far evaded capture. He remains a fugitive with his wife Sarah and their two cats.